This article was excerpted from the April 2004 issue of Provider Magazine, the monthly magazine for long-term care professionals.
When Lisa Augustus began her long-term care career as a CNA, her goal was not very lofty. “I was unemployed and needed a job,” she says.
“I was young and did not have any definite plans,” says Augustus, now DON at Otter Tail Nursing Home [in Battle Lake, Minn.].
“After about six months watching the nurses,” she says, she thought she wanted to “do more.” One year later she had her licensed practical nurse (LPN) degree. After another year, she received her RN associate degree. “At that point, I thought I had educated myself out of a job at the facility,” she says.
Not so. She was promoted to charge nurse for several years, then became assistant to the MDS coordinator, assistant DON, then DON, a position she has held for the past three years.
According to Glenn Pearl, Augustus has been an inspiration to other CNAs and LPNs, who are now pursuing advanced degrees. “She established that it is possible to move up,” he says.
While her route to the top of the nursing ladder sounds smooth, her working conditions are anything but, says Pearl.
“We have a reputation for accepting difficult residents. We do not have a locked or otherwise segregated unit, yet we are able to admit and integrate residents who have failed at other nursing facilities or who have come from a more restrictive environment.”
Through her leadership, the facility has won an American Health Care Association Step I Quality Award. In addition, the facility boasts the best Beverly Enterprises scorecard in the state of Minnesota for an annual turnover rate of just over 10 percent. Says Pearl, “That’s indicative of how much staff enjoy and respect working with Lisa.”
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